


Youth Is A Tragedy

by Fiendishfools



Category: Frühlings Erwachen | Spring Awakening - Frank Wedekind, Spring Awakening - Sheik/Sater
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, Childhood Friends, F/M, Gap Filler, Hurt/Comfort, I have feelings and nowhere to put them, What happens in between the scenes
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-20
Updated: 2020-04-28
Packaged: 2021-02-28 21:08:45
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 4
Words: 4,170
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23233765
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Fiendishfools/pseuds/Fiendishfools
Summary: Ilse Neumann stood on the edge of a graveyard four times. The second, the third, the first, the fourth. Childhood is so fleeting.
Relationships: Ilse Neumann/Moritz Stiefel, Melchior Gabor/Ilse Neumann, Wendla Bergmann/Melchior Gabor
Comments: 21
Kudos: 11





	1. Left Behind

**Author's Note:**

> this is my first published work on here or otherwise, so please be kind, and thank you for reading!

Ilse stood on the edge of a graveyard four times. 

The second time was not long after. The funeral was sparse, most of the bodies packed in around a single open grave, far too small, too young to be there. Ilse was not supposed to recognize so many faces in the crowd. She wasn't meant to count the familiar faces and come up one short. Ilse had always been good at counting, it wasn’t a mistake.

Maybe she could've blamed it on the distance, her stubborn feet refusing to step any closer, or infringe on the mourning she was not allowed to partake in. If she looked closely enough, somewhere, a mop of brown hair would be tucked into the crowd, leaving the safety of distance to quell his worry. 

Hm. Safety. 

Surely, if she just got closer, the image would make itself clearer. Two more nights and Johan’s muddy brown canvas would be a portrait. Two more steps, and the familiarity would be wiped away by the quick work of details. 

It wasn't Wendla, shocked and empty, clutching her mother's hand, like a boat tied desperately to the shore. The wind made it look like she might drift away at any second, whereas Ilse found herself rooted to the spot. 

Any closer, and it wouldn't be Melchior standing at the foot of a hole in the ground, all alone, gazing down into his own personal hell. 

Any closer, and she'd have the answers to the questions that plagued her along with the cough from that night. They rattled deep in her chest, sticking to her ribs. Why didn't he follow? Why didn't he listen? Why had she said that? Where was the boy who'd once played pirates? Where had summer gone? Why was it always so cold? What had become of their childhood?

But Ilse could not move any closer, for fear of committing to what she'd set out to do in the first place. A grave was a bed, if you didn't think about it too much, and Ilse so desperately needed a place to rest, more than anything. For now she would stand vigil. 

She watched as one by one the mourners--her friends--filtered away. Hanschen and Ernst together, Martha with a terrible weight in her steps, and Thea just barely behind her. Anna and Wendla left without even a glance her way, then Georg. 

Melchior couldn't tear himself away. Neither could she. 

He had to feel it, too. The cold that settled under her scalp and the way it trickled down into everything else. How it made your hands feel heavy, and roots grow out of the bottoms of your feet. She knew he felt it, too, in the way that he didn't move. Melchior was not meant to be a pillar. 

He was a fire, a raging river. 

Ilse was the wind. 

She blew down the slope, through the rows of headstones, wordlessly past the exiting crowds. Melchior didn't glance her way until she stood right next to him, their shoulders brushing like they were kids again; hiding behind a fallen log next to the creek, ready to spring up and surprise Moritz with branches fashioned into swords as he came traipsing down the hill. She didn't realize he was crying until she returned his gaze, or that she was too until they both eased out a tandem breath, moving in sync like fierce combatants. Though, what world was there left to take on? 

For once neither of them had the answer. 

When Wendla slipped on the riverbank and scraped her knee, staining the trim of her dress, it was Ilse who suggested they soak it in the river. It was Melchior who'd patted dry her wound with the inside of his jacket. 

Neither of them had the answer. The winter wind didn't whisper of what was supposed to come next, and the fires they stoked burned with red hot guilt. 

Ilse wrapped her hand around Melchior's arm, the fabric of his jacket stiff from the cold. If he seemed to crumble, just a little, there was no telling which of his many structures were at fault, or if maybe Melchior could feel the earth shifting beneath them as well. Time and circumstance had made everything less sturdy. 

"It wasn't supposed to go like this." Ilse said, shaking her head. 

"I know," Melchior took another impossible step closer, ripping his roots from the ground to turn his back to the wind. 

Ilse stepped forwards, finding the crook of Melchior's neck to lay her weary head against. He'd grown since they'd last shared a moment--since Ilse had asked for friendly reassurance in this way. Even the simplest of things were different now. She wouldn't ever be taller than him again. He wouldn't ever have to jump to reach the branches where Ilse sat easily. Moritz wouldn't ever--

They breathed another tandem breath, quiet and sad. 

"It's my fault." They said--or maybe it was the wind. Maybe it went unsaid. The mere place they stood evidence enough that someone had to be in the wrong. 

But did it have to be them? 

If it didn't, would they even be able to tell? Or did the well of their sadness reach too deep to see? It was unlike Moritz to hand out blame, but it was all to much like them to take on more than too much at once. 

The empty graveyard whistled with cold, which was eventually enough to separate the child pirates turned grievous. Looking into Melchior's eyes, Ilse found no answers, but she saw for the first time in a long time that she didn't have to search for them alone. That's what friends were for.


	2. Those You've Known

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Ilse finds Melchior in the graveyard. tw for attempted suicide, nothing super graphic, just what happens in the show.

The third time came after a flurry. 

Ilse received a message late into the night. Delivered personally to Priapia by way of another artist's commune just outside of town. Since Melchior had been sent away, he'd written her from the reformatory. She’d been entrusted with the sacred task of making sure Wendla heard his words, that she knew she wasn’t alone. Ilse’d come to know what had transpired between them, how much and how quickly everything had changed. She often found herself pressing a quill into the palm of her hand, unsure how even to respond in times like these. Often she did not respond at all, or she waited for Wendla to do the talking on their behalf. Ilse could be the messager. 

Naturally, this time was different. 

Ilse had received a letter that no longer had a final destination. She’d gaped at the address—no one had told him. 

Melchior had finally escaped, and Wendla was dead. 

That thought alone brought Ilse to her knees. It kept her there even when Gustav found her in the afternoon. He pried the letter from her hands, taking in the devastation himself. He knew, of course—words spread no matter what they were in Priapia--but he didn’t understand. He shook his head, sighing for poor, too-late-Melchior and muttered something or another about it just being the way things go. 

“Youth is a tragedy.” He said, stopped in the doorway. He wasn’t going to help her at all. “Best to move on from it as soon as you can.” 

Ilse was trying to move on, but things just kept getting worse. If Melchior had no idea what was waiting for him that night, then she was going to have to be the one to inform him. 

They had grown closer, once more, but she couldn’t do this—she couldn’t be the one to kill another one of their friends, not to Melchior, not when he was the only person she had left. How could he look at her again after tonight? Why was she there and Wendla gone? 

She found footfall in the quiet night, bundled up in one of Gustav’s coats. The graveyard was further away then she remembered it, but even so, she could hear the church bells ring in the distance. Ding. Keep walking. Ding. A little further. Ding. The gate’s just up ahead. 

The chapel sat in the middle of the graveyard, cutting high above the stone monuments, a meeting place for ill-fated mourners, and those who hadn’t yet realized they fell into that category. Plenty of the artists in Priapia went about the graveyard at night, but Ilse had never joined. At first she’d been afraid of the dark. Eventually, it had just felt inappropriate. None of them had anyone they knew buried beneath the dirt. It meant nothing.

The final bell tolled, and in the silence, Ilse heard Melchior’s voice cut into the night. 

“Moritz—you were right! They’ll… They’ll scatter a little earth, and they’ll thank their god!” 

Ilse rounded the corner, feet pounding against the cold dirt, and there was Melchior, kneeling upon familiar ground, the razor held against his neck glinting in the moonlight. 

She couldn’t move, couldn’t breathe—

And then another noise. 

A voice in the darkness. 

Wendla? 

“Wendla.” Melchior sobbed, his hands falling to the ground as the razor skittered aside. 

He heard it, too. There was that feeling, again, the cold that Chilled Ilse all the way down to her boots, that brought with it the sadness, and the grief she’d kept closet to her heart for fear of forgetting her dear friends. 

What had become of them now?

Moritz, a dropoutt.

Wendla, a child mother.

Melchior, a broken man. 

And her—she was… A coward. Again. Twice over. She had let their childhood slip through her hands, one by one. Her own, and then Moritz’s, Wendla’s, and now she scrambled to hold onto Melchior. Clinging desperately as the winter winds turned him into dust. 

It filled her sails, and she went padding forwards, past the headstones, and the fresh graves, towards Melchior with his head hung low. 

She kneeled, and he did not move, though his pale skin was not stained red. 

Her hand covered his, soft as the wind, and he finally stirred. 

“Wendla?” 

Ilse shook her head. 

She heard it in the wind. 

Ilse?

“Ilse?” 

You frightened me. 

“Yeah.” She squeezed his hand. “I’m still here.” 

Why did you frighten me? 

“I’m not going anywhere.” 

Melchior’s hand shifted, drawing her closer.

“Ilse, I don’t know what to do.” 

And the thing was that Ilse didn’t know either. They weren’t meant to know. They hadn’t had the chance to learn, yet. No one in Priapia was setting the example, or sitting her down to tell her the way these things were meant work. 

For christ’s sake she was still a kid! 

She was a kid, so was Melchior, and they were both hurting in a terrible, adult way. 

All she wanted… 

All she wanted was to be a kid again. 

Ilse held onto Melchior’s hand tightly, tethering him to herself. She wouldn’t ever let go again. 

“Come back home with me. And… And in the morning, we can go… We can go…” Her voice broke, and Melchior finally looked at her then, terror and sadness in his eyes. “We’ll go dig up those old tomahawks, yeah? And we’ll sit down by the river… And we’ll figure it out.” 

Honestly, I wish I could. Said the wind. 

“Alright.” Said Melchior. "We'll figure it out." 

"We will." Ilse nodded, pulling him into her arms.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> tysm for the lovely comments, I definitely wouldn't have gotten this chapter out so soon if it wasn't for them. (if you want to know where my efforts have been going, feel free to click through to my profile and check out my my zombie apocalypse fic if les mis is your jam) 
> 
> I fully made myself sob a couple times writing the ending of this, so i hope i did it justice! lord knows it was enough for me lmao


	3. Blue Wind/Don't Do Sadness

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Ilse finds Moritz. Two people in crisis
> 
> tw for suicide, suicidal ideation, guns and mentions of sexual assault

Ilse stood on the edge of a graveyard four times. 

The first time was unlike the rest, for it was the beginning of something Ilse didn’t even know had begun. 

The forest was as dark as it was inviting, dusk having settled quickly over the horizon, and an argument having wormed it's way into the commune for everyone to participate in. Somewhere along the line, Ilse's glass was snatched from her hand, deftly fumbled before being thrown to the ground in a cascade of shards. She ran out, away, until the shouting was only an echo of distance. 

It was cold, she was tired, and not for the first time, she felt like she wasn’t wanted anywhere. 

“Dumb whore.” Johan had jeered as she ran. “It’s just a GLASS! COME BACK HERE. WHAT ARE YOU RUNNING FROM?” 

She didn’t know, nor did she stop to consider the answer. 

All she knew was that she could run. Far. She was good at it. She’d run down cobblestone streets, barefoot in the snow, quickly down muddy hills. 

She’d run hand in hand with her friends, she’d clutched at her dress to keep it from tripping herself as it slipped from her too small frame, she reached for branches, snatching leaves as she passed. 

But this time she was alone, and heaving. Every breath felt like a knife in her chest instead of the relief night could sometimes bring. 

Without even meaning to, she’d run all the way back to the forest from her childhood. It was easy to, really. It lay between Priapia and the town—and she didn’t dare go so far as to find a main road, or a home. She was a ghost, but the people hadn’t forgotten about her. If they saw her walking the streets at night, they’d send for her father, who’d chase her until morning came. 

No, the forest would do fine—even if the wind slipped easily through the thin fabric of her dress. Even if her socks were already wet with snow—it was safe there. Safe to lay down and sleep. Finally sleep. And then things wouldn’t be so bad anymore. 

She continued forwards, tears streaming down her cheeks. There was a clearing up ahead. She’d stay there for the night, and never go back to Priapia, and those men who treated her terribly, with their paintbrushes and roving hands. 

As the trees parted, she slowed, the clearing coming into view. 

But she wasn’t alone. 

“Moritz Stiefel?” 

He looked like a dream—but it was true. Ilse knew that it was because of the way his breath made clouds in front of his face, and how his shaggy hair rustled in the wind like the leaves. He looked frightened, but not… Well, he looked a lot better than she did. All done up like he was about to go to school. It was like he’d been caught in a painting, save for the gun in his hand, and the look on his face when he saw her standing there. 

He turned quickly, and when she approached, the gun was out of sight. Hidden away. 

He’d expected to be alone, too, it seemed. Ilse could feel it, still tight in her chest.

Him too. 

Oh—she’d been talking the whole time. That was embarrassing. 

“But… What about you Moritz? Still in school?” 

He nodded, pulled his jacket tighter around himself. 

“Well, this semester I’m through.” 

“God… Remember how we used to run back to my house and play pirates? Wendla Bergman, Melchior Gabor, you and I?” 

She treasured those memories. Sometimes, it felt like nothing good had happened since. They hadn’t even really grown up before she’d run away, and then that had been that. No parent wanted their kids frolicking about with the dirty girl from the artist commune, lest she tempt and lead them away. 

She wouldn’t have. Obviously. Ilse just missed her friends. 

But Moritz was there. In the forest. Looking at him, she could see every last second of her childhood laid out in front of her. She saw summers to come, walks in the forest, Moritz’s hand at her side, their fingers brushing. 

She saw them laughing, as they splashed Wendla and Melchior on the other side of the creek. She saw him hiding in the trees with her when things got bad. 

“Actually, I better go.” Moritz said. 

And the vision fell away. 

“Walk as far as my house with me!” 

“And?” 

“And…” She smiled at him. “And we’ll dig up those old tomahawks. And play together, Moritz. Like we used to.” 

Under the scruff of his hair hanging loose in front of his face, Ilse could’ve sworn she saw his eyes water. 

“We did have some remarkable times… Hiding in our wigwam…” 

“Yes!” The sky lit up, like the sunset of a thousand tomorrows, and Ilse stepped forwards once more, reaching a hand out to him. “I’ll brush your hair and curl it… Set you on my little hobby horse…” 

She took his hand, holding onto it tightly. Come with me, she willed, let’s leave this place, I don’t want to die here alone. 

“Honestly I wish I could.” Moritz wrenched himself away, stepping back, and Ilse’s hand fell limply to her side. 

He turned from her, then, staring off into the middle distance that Ilse just couldn’t see. Her eyes were clouded with tears then, as the wind whipped through, blowing the cold up her legs, and pulling her away from the summers she’d imagined. This was no summer. She could not pretend to be a child. 

“Goodnight, Ilse.” 

“Goodnight?” She spat, incredulous, indignant—hurt. 

Moritz didn’t care. 

“The virgil, remember?”

“Just for an hour!

“I can’t.” 

“Well, walk me at least!” She pleaded, rushing forwards, grabbing his shoulder. 

He turned sharply, knocking her hadn’t away. The Moritz from mere moments ago was gone. In the shadow, Ilse didn’t know who she saw in front of her. 

Some boy—some man. It was worse than being alone. 

“Honestly.” He repeated. “I wish I could.” 

Ilse stumbled back, one last knife plunging deep into her chest. The tears that had been prickling at her eyes ran freely down her cheeks. She turned and ran, her wet socks sloshing through the frost of the night, biting cold at her ankles. 

And then she—stopped. Right at the edge of the clearing. 

She didn’t know why. Part of her hopped that maybe in looking back, Moritz would change his mind. Maybe he’d realize he made a mistake. But when she turned to him, he had that same expression on his face, almost like he wasn’t even thinking. 

“You know, by the time you finally wake up, I’ll be lying in some trash heap!” 

The forest closed in on her then. She ran without a final destination, determined only to put as much distance between herself and the clearing as possible. It didn’t matter if she couldn’t ever find the path again. It didn’t matter how far away she got from Priapia. She didn’t intend for anyone to be able to find her body. She’d finally let the forest take her, and then she wouldn’t have to worry anymore about the people who didn’t want her. 

She wouldn’t have to worry about the summers, either, though she knew they weren’t coming to begin with. 

Ilse heaved, and the force of it nearly sent her toppling over, as her lungs screamed for respite. Her breathing was the only sound. There were no lights beside the moon, and even that was half-covered by the barren trees, looming tall and imposing above her. She sank down to the ground, feeling her thin dress catch and snag against the tree trunk at her back. 

Finally, there was quiet.

And then a shot rang out.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> hi! thanks for sticking with me through this very heavy chapter. I mean, it's blue wind/dont do sadness, so it's gonna be angsty. 
> 
> Also this was very difficult to not turn into a song fic. js. so i ended up cutting a bit of dialogue around the songs and also ilse's whole monologue cause as great as it is, i didn't really wanna contextualize the whole thing. 
> 
> Anyway! hope you enjoyed my angst! last chapter coming... Eventually. Who knows when. I'm almost done with schoolwork, but am still existing in this weird kind of in-between state, where all I do is colour in postcards and listen to the magnus archives (i've listened to like 50 episodes in the last three days) 
> 
> if you like, you can find me on tumblr @ mysteriouscynic


	4. Song of Purple Summer

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Ilse and Melchior say their goodbyes. 
> 
> No tws, just sad.

“Do you hear them sometimes?” 

Melchior turned his face from the sun to look at her. The two of them had been laid out in the grass since morning, having found no better way to spend their last day in town. 

“On the wind.” Ilse continued. “Do you ever hear Wendla’s voice? Or Moritz’s laugh?”

Melchior nodded, his hair ruffling the grass or the grass ruffling his hair, in such a way that of the strands that had grown long, a few fell into his face. The people in Priapia didn’t care how long or short your hair was. After a month, it had just… Come to be so, and in the passing time not a lot had changed. Melchior’s hair was getting longer, the days were getting warmer, and sometimes Ilse saw glimpses of the future. 

She saw it in the way Melchior perched on a chair, or in curtains filtering morning light. She saw the future far beyond the horizon from the top of a tree. There was a whole world far out there, and maybe in it, a place for them. 

“Sometimes. Do you?” 

“All the time. They whisper to me when I’m sad… They laugh at your terrible jokes—I feel Moritz’s hand on mine when we play chess sometimes. Telling me where to move.” 

Melchior laughed, just soft enough to ruffle the midday silence. Where the sun hung in the sky, the gravestones barely cast any shadow and the whole cemetery was bathed in light. The way it ought to be, if Ilse could will it to be so. If it were up to her, it would never rain there, but the grass would stay beautiful and green. The gloom and the rainy days had never stopped their visiting, but they were harder to smile through. When it rained, Ilse cried, because no one could tell which of the droplets were hers. 

She didn’t want the cemetery to be only be a place of sadness, and she relished the sunny days lying by their friends, though not in the same way she once had. 

Ilse had stopped dreaming of herself among the dirt some couple months into Melchior’s stay in Priapia. It had been a bitterly cold night right at the tail-end of winter, and the two of them had taken vigil by the wood oven in one of the main tents to keep warm. She’d placed her frigid hands on Melchior’s cheeks, and instead of recoiling he offered up his open jacket. He’d closed it back around her with her hands on his sides, warm with the rapid beating of his heart. 

“I’m worried.” She said, quietly. 

“About leaving?” Melchior replied. 

“Yes.” 

“The world is not so unjust that there won’t be a single place for us beyond here.” 

“No—I’m worried I’ll forget. Or that they won’t be able to find us if we leave.” 

“We can always return.” Melchior said, and Ilse could tell he had turned to look at her once more. “And… In the meantime we’ll play chess, and find another creek to sit by. I don’t think it matters where we are, as long as we’re breathing, we’ll be able to remember—and they’ll find us. That is if we’re ever really apart.” 

“Do you think we are?” 

“No.” Melchior shook his head. “It doesn’t feel like that could be true.” 

He sat up, then, stretching his arms far above his head. Ilse watched the light catch and gleam in his hair, the way his chest rose and fell. He held a hand out to her and she took it, pulling herself to her feet. 

Moritz lay just below, and his headstone stood in front of them—Wendla was a couple plots over, her marker still adorned with her mother’s flowers. They’d only run into her once, though she hadn’t seen them. Wendla had sat patiently atop the stone, watching as it was decorated and cleaned. Ilse had made sure to carve out room for her name to see the sun, so she could bask as well. 

Ilse sought to rectify Mortiz’s barren stone every time she came, and yet again she pulled the flowers she’d picked down by the creek from her pocket, and lay them at his feet. She could feel him smiling, brushing back his own shaggy hair. A couple weeks prior they’d spread seeds on his plot, and now below the cut stalks of Ilse’s gift, she could see the start of a new bloom.   
Moritz would have flowers even in their absence, even if no one else took it upon themselves. 

Melchior took her hand. 

“Are you ready to go?” He asked. 

“Just a moment more.” Ilse replied, closing her eyes. 

She felt Melchior’s hand, warm in her own. The cool wind wrapped itself around her ankles, swaying her to and fro, urging for a step, a move, to find forwards. Birds chirped in the nearby woods, singing a song of some purple summer, as if they had any idea of what was to come. 

No more of the town that didn’t want them, or the drunken artists who preached their long-forgotten destinies. There was a place somewhere without the schoolhouse rumours that haunted them—where time knew not the bounds of their expectations. It would be light, and breezy even when storm clouds rolled over the horizon and blotted out the sun. There would always be wood on the stove, clean linens in the cupboard, and wine to drink, if that’s what it took. Hopefully, it wouldn’t. In that place, there was no need for forgetting. 

Ilse longed so desperately to find it. 

She drew in a long breath, a last fleeting moment to hold onto and sear into her lungs, before looking finally to Melchior, as he too silently prepared. 

“Alright.” She said. 

He smiled, nodded—and Ilse saw the future.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> thank you so much for joining me on this little journey through my feelings for spring awakening! im both so sad, and so satisfied to finally be finishing this piece. It's like a little piece of my soul is forever out here for everyone to see, and honestly i couldnt be prouder. 
> 
> thank you so much for your continued support, and if you want to get in touch, you can find me on tumblr @ mysteriouscynic. i dont do too much Spring blogging but i'd love to chat
> 
> thank you thank you thank you, and i hope you enjoyed the final chapter of youth is a tragedy<3

**Author's Note:**

> hi! i hope you enjoyed so far! I have no idea when the next chapter's gonna go up, but hopefully soon cause I'm living that #quarantine life, and by quarantine i mean social-distancing. anyway. im gonna try and finish it! woo!


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